In response to a variety of activities allegedly undertaken by Russia, the U.S. Government has imposed a series of additional sanctions and export control measures since early March.  Collectively, the March and April sanctions take a variety of forms, including the suspension of entry into the United States and the denial of visas to certain non-U.S. citizens, denial of government credit and financial assistance, cessation of all foreign military financing, export controls changes, expanded sanctions authority, and additional designations of blocked persons.  These sanctions may affect anyone doing business with or in Russia.  Public companies should be particularly mindful of the potential for more reporting pursuant to Section 13(r)(1)(D) of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 (“34 Act”) as a side effect of certain of the additional sanctions.

Additional Sanctions Introduced and More Designations Under Existing Authorities

Following the determination that the Government of the Russian Federation violated the Chemical Weapons Convention based on the Navalny attack, the U.S. Government designated multiple new parties under existing sanctions authorities.  Pursuant to Section 231 of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (“CAATSA”), the U.S. State Department added six parties to its list of persons that are part of or act for, or on behalf of, the Russian intelligence or defense sectors.  The newly added parties are:

• 27th Scientific Center;
• 48 Central Scientific Research Institute Sergiev Posad;
• 48 Central Scientific Research Institute Kirov;
• 48 Central Scientific Research Institute Yekaterinburg;
• State Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology; and
• 33rd Scientific Research
  

One driver of the popularity of SPACs is the perception that they have lower liability risks than a traditional IPO.  But a closer look at SPAC transactions suggests that the liability risks are not as low as some believe, and SPAC sponsors and directors and officers of SPAC companies should act to protect themselves against potential claims from both the private plaintiffs’ bar and the government.  Click here to read the alert in full.

The House Committee on Financial Services met virtually on April 20, 2021 to consider legislation that, among other things, would require public companies to annually disclose the voluntarily, self-identified gender, race, ethnicity and veteran status of their board directors. The Committee cited a 2017 board diversity survey finding that increased board diversity improves companies’ ability to innovate and enhances overall business performance.

In the meantime, the wait continues for an SEC decision on Nasdaq’s proposed “comply or explain why not” mandate that would require public disclosure of board diversity statistics for most Nasdaq-listed companies, initially proposed in December 2020.   The SEC most recently acted on these rules on March 10, 2021, when it issued an “Order Instituting Proceedings to Determine Whether to Approve or Disapprove Proposed Rule Changes, as Modified by Amendment No. 1” (the “Order”).  The Order postponed the date, which had already been extended, by which the SEC is required to make its decision regarding the proposed rules, as amended, until possibly as late as August 2021. 

Some speculated that the delay was, at least in part, to allow time for Gary Gensler to be named SEC Chair.  The Senate confirmed Gensler’s nomination on April 14, 2021, and he was sworn in as a member of the SEC on April 17, 2021, so many expect movement on the Order this summer.  Comments continue to trickle in to the SEC website, and the SEC Office of the Investor Advocate continues to meet by telephone

Last week the Staff of the Division of Corporation Finance issued a statement addressing a variety of accounting, financial reporting and governance issues that a private operating company should consider before undertaking a business combination with a special purpose acquisition company (a “SPAC”), shortly followed by one by the Acting Chief Accountant addressing financial reporting and auditing considerations for companies considering merging with SPACs.

The Corporation Finance statement addressed:

• Ineligibility for
  • The 71-day extension for target company financials, which must be filed on Form 8-K within four business days of closing the de-SPAC transaction
  • Incorporation of 1934 Act filings on Form S-1 until three years after closing 
  • Use of Form S-8 to register equity plans until 60 days after filing the “Super 8-K” containing required “Form 10 information” 
  • WKSI status, use of free writing prospectuses and certain other less strict requirements for public offerings 
• Public company reporting requirements applicable to the SPAC before, and the combined company after, closing including
  • Books and records requirements
  • SEC reporting and disclosure requirements 
  • The Staff noted that in the limited circumstances described in S-K CDI 215.02, it would not object if the combined company were to exclude management’s assessment of internal control over financial reporting in the Form 10-K covering the fiscal year in which the transaction was consummated 
  • New accounting requirements
• Stock exchange listing standards, including quantitative as well as corporate governance
  

The SEC recently announced its adoption of interim final amendments to certain forms, including Form 10-K and Form 20-F, to implement the congressionally mandated document submission and disclosure requirements of the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act (the “HFCA Act”) that became effective in December 2020.  The amendments will become effective 30 days after publication in the Federal Register.  They apply to public companies (each, a “Commission-Identified Issuer”) that are identified by the SEC as having filed an annual report that includes an audit report issued by a registered public accounting firm that (1) has a branch or office located in a foreign jurisdiction and (2) the PCAOB has determined it is unable to inspect or investigate completely because of a position taken by an authority in that jurisdiction.  The SEC will be responsible for identifying such companies, and the PCAOB will be required to identify audit firms that have a location in such a foreign jurisdiction.

Annual Report Amendments.  The new requirements will be implemented (1) with respect to Form 10-K, by the addition of Part II, Item 9C, and (2) with respect to Form 20-F, by the addition of Part II, Item 161.  Each new item will be captioned “Disclosure Regarding Foreign Jurisdictions that Prevent Inspections.”

New Submission Requirement – Commission-Identified Issuers.  The new rules refer to any year in which the SEC identifies a company as a Commission-Identified Issuer as a “non-inspection year.”  The interim final amendments will require that each Commission-Identified Issuer submit, on or

The SEC recently issued a public statement asking investors, companies and other market participants to share their views on climate change disclosure.  Comments are due by June 13, 2021 and can be submitted via the SEC webform or email.  In addition to, or in lieu of, written submissions, the SEC staff is also willing to meet with members of the public to discuss their feedback.

The SEC generally will post submissions on www.sec.gov, so personal identifying information should not be included in written feedback. The SEC encouraged commenters to include empirical data and other information in support of their comments. Original data may assist the SEC in assessing the materiality of climate-related disclosures, and the costs and benefits of different regulatory approaches to climate disclosure.

The public statement contains 15 multipart questions for consideration, including the key excerpts set out below.  Please refer to the public statement for the full text of the questions.

The UK Government published yesterday the long-awaited White Paper consulting on proposals to significantly shake up the UK corporate governance framework, including a package of measures aimed at improving the UK’s audit, corporate reporting and corporate governance systems in the wake of recent accounting and corporate governance scandals. Under the proposals, the regulator would have new powers to hold directors of large businesses to account, directors’ remuneration could be withheld and/or recovered in the event of serious director failings and the laws around the payment of dividends would be strengthened.

Whilst they didn’t take things as far as Sarbanes-Oxley standards in the US when it comes to directors’ liability and personal attestation of financial accounts (which many had been speculating about in the press over recent weeks and was largely thought to be the reason it was delayed by No. 10), the proposals do seek to make a number of significant proposals which we outline in the note below and, importantly, increase the scope of companies to which they would apply to now include large private companies.

The proposals are likely to be welcomed by many industry bodies and regulators including the Financial Reporting Council, Competition and Markets Authority and Sir John Kingman, all of whom published independent reviews which contributed to these proposals.

The full briefing can be found here

In a speech on March 15, 2021, Allison Herren Lee, Acting Chair of the SEC, reported on the steps the SEC is taking to meet investors’ growing demand for climate and ESG information, stating that “no single issue has been more pressing for me” and that “climate and ESG are front and center for the SEC.”  She observed that there has been a shift in capital towards ESG and sustainable investment strategies, and that ESG risks and metrics increasingly affect investment decision-making.

Lee indicated that the SEC will devote substantial resources to investor protection initiatives that extend beyond, but are mutually reinforcing of, the SEC’s climate and ESG initiatives.  She noted that these other initiatives include, among others, ensuring strong and clear standards for broker-dealers, taking a “hard look” at the effects of the continuing flow of capital away from the public markets and proceeding with equity market structure reforms.  Reflecting the change in administration and SEC leadership, she noted that this may result in undoing some recently adopted rules and/or guidance.

Highlights of Acting Chair Lee’s speech follow:

Improving Climate and ESG Disclosures.  Lee noted that the SEC’s fundamental role with respect to climate and ESG is helping ensure that material information gets into the market in a timely manner.  She believes the SEC’s current voluntary framework for climate and ESG disclosures neither ensures that result nor meets investor demands; as a result, the SEC has begun taking steps to create a mandatory and comprehensive ESG disclosure framework

Yesterday, John Coates, the acting director of the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance, announced a proposed framework for considering new ESG disclosure requirements, recognizing that while the scope of ESG issues is very broad, specific ESG issues affect particular companies differently based on industry, geography and other factors.

Need for “adaptive and innovative” policy

Coates compared ESG issues to asbestos-related risks, which evolved from invisible “non-financial” risks that were not addressed in SEC filings to visible and eventually clear financial risks that were increasingly disclosed in companies’ filings.  He believes that SEC policy needs to be adaptive and innovative and, for example, respond to climate risks that were formerly peripheral and now have greater significance.

Effective ESG disclosure system

Coates believes some of the questions the SEC should consider include:

• What disclosures are most useful?
• What is the right balance between principles and metrics?
• How much standardization can be achieved across industries?
• How and when should standards evolve?
• What is the best way to verify or provide assurance about disclosures?
• Where and how should disclosures be globally comparable?
• Where and how can disclosures be aligned with information companies already use to make decisions?

Costs from having no ESG requirements

Although recognizing that disclosure requirements impose costs on companies, Coates believes that failing to establish ESG requirements is itself costly – that the lack of consistent, comparable and reliable ESG data discourages investment and voting decisions.  Companies incur higher costs in responding to multiple, conflicting or redundant investor

The wait continues for any public response from the SEC to a recent letter from three Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, urging the SEC to (1) consider reforms to prevent what the senators identified as abusive 10b5-1 plan practices and (2) improve disclosure of and enforcement relating to such plans.

Senators’ SEC Requests for Information.  The senators asked the SEC to respond to the following questions by Monday, February 22, 2021:

In the letter, the senators said they believe reforms are necessary in large part because “new evidence indicates that executives – especially those in the health care industry – are abusing these